


I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

by adreadfulidea



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Femdom, Mental Health Issues, Mild D/s, Multi, Other, Punk AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:58:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3642654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She caught the eye of a guy in the back corner completely by accident; she’d seen him before, always hovering at the edge of the crowd and wearing that same ugly plaid jacket. He smiled at her and then just as quickly stopped, the expression passing over his face like a cloud through the sky. </p><p>Someone was going to throw a bottle. She could feel it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the TFLN Challenge. My prompt was: (818): you told me your penis was albino and it couldnt be exposed to light so you needed to keep it in me. This story is set in the late 1970's or the early 1980's, depending on your preference. The title is taken from the Ramones song of the same name.

 

 

The singer was drunk, which wasn’t unusual; he was also telling a story about his ex-girlfriend, which was. The ash from his cigarette - he’d lit up on stage, when he started his monologue - kept dropping onto his shirt and he was listing sideways like a sinking ship. It had been funny at first, but -

“And... and then I told her,” he said, “I told her that my dick -”

“Fuck’s sake,” Stan muttered.

“- was albino and couldn’t be exposed to the sun, so I was gonna have to keep it in her -”

“Oh god,” said Peggy. She rolled her black-rimmed eyes. “This is so bad that I’m embarrassed.” Nobody was on the floor, even, and usually it was packed with thrashing bodies. She looked at the bored and irritated faces surrounding her, everyone clustered at the bar or around tables, peeling labels off their beer and doing shots. People had been leaving steadily all night. She caught the eye of a guy in the back corner completely by accident; she’d seen him before, always hovering at the edge of the crowd and wearing that same ugly plaid jacket. He smiled at her and then just as quickly stopped, the expression passing over his face like a cloud through the sky.

Someone was going to throw a bottle. She could feel it.

“- and do you know what she said?” the singer continued.

“Was it shut up and _sing_?” Stan yelled, and everyone laughed.

She glanced back over her shoulder at her friend in the back. He was watching them intently and trying to look like that wasn’t what he was doing; she saw the moment when he realised she knew, when he fumbled his glass of beer in embarrassment. She turned back towards the front so he wouldn’t see her laughing.

The bottle came next; Peggy knew it would. She ducked just in case it was followed by a friend and felt Stan curl his hands protectively over the back of her head.

Predictably it all went downhill from there.

 

 

After the lights went back on and they helped clean up the glass, Joyce gave them free drinks at the bar. Having rewarded her good samaritans appropriately she abandoned her duties and went to go flirt with Megan instead, lighting her cigarette and leaning in with a sly smile. Peggy knew better than to interrupt that.

So she dropped onto a stool next to the kid in the plaid coat and looked him over with open curiosity. He was dressed like an old man and had the start of a beautiful bruise glowing around his left eye.

“What happened there?” she asked - yelled in his ear, really, since someone had climbed up on stage and started banging away at the drumset.

“An elbow,” he said, prodding at the area with two fingers.

“I like it,” she said. “It makes you look like a tough guy.”

“It’ll take more than a black eye to do that.” He grinned when he said it, wide and completely dorky. He was going to get eaten alive.

Stan came over, a drink in each hand. “Is she bothering you? I can have her thrown out.”

Peggy whacked at his arm and pulled him closer by the belt loops of his jeans. “This is Stan, my boyfriend. I’m Peggy.”

“I’ve never seen this woman before in my life,” Stan said, running a hand through her hair - or trying to, since it was all tacky with hairspray.

“I’m Ginsberg,” the guy said, and all they shook hands very formally. Like they were in a conference room instead of a bar with sticky floors and duct tape over the cracks in the windows.

“This your first time at SCDP?” Stan asked. “You don’t look like a regular.”

Ginsberg looked down at himself and tugged at the hem of his used-car-salesman jacket . “No. I guess not.”

“ _Stan_ ,” Peggy chided. “You hurt his feelings.”

“I did not,” Stan said. “He’s fine, see?” And with that he shoved at Ginsberg’s shoulder, who gave him a look of baffled wonder. He clearly had no idea what that gesture was supposed to mean, but neither did Peggy. Boys were weird.

“... I’m fine, yeah,” he said. “I know I must look pretty funny in this place, but - no, I’m not new, exactly. I been here a couple times before. I heard the music from outside when I was walking by one night. So I came in.”

Peggy decided she liked that image. Wandering into the dark and the neon from the street outside, lured by the music. She herself had come with friends the first time, like most people. She may not have stayed, or returned, if she didn’t have someone to talk to.

“I go for a lot of walks,” he said. “At night especially, when I can’t sleep.”

“I write when I get like that,” said Peggy. “I wouldn’t go walking around by myself at night, that’s crazy.”

“You write?” he asked, excitedly. “Me too! What kind of stuff do you write, poetry? Working on a book?”

“Mostly music reviews,” she said, “for some of the local rags.” She tried not to let the swell of pride she felt at those words show. Even if she was the token girl, at least she was _there_.

“I got a couple stories published,” he said. “In the magazines. One was this mystery story, but it was pretty stupid - a potboiler, you know? The other one was science fiction.”

“Like Star Trek,” she asked, “aliens and whatever?” It had never appealed to her, blue people with antennae shooting ray guns around. Or spaceships, which were just fancy cars in the air.

“No, no aliens, not in this. There’s a guy on the moon, right? And he’s terraforming it, he’s preparing it for human habitation. He’s got all these big machines to do it for him, so he’s all alone up there. And eventually he finds these caves. Except there shouldn’t be any caves. He keeps going back to them, and one day he hears, from underground -” He knocked on the bar counter, three times.

“And then what? Does he go check it out?” asked Stan. He sounded really interested.

Ginsberg looked surprised, like he’d forgotten they were listening to him. “What do you think? Should he?”

“Hell no,” said Stan. “He should get out of there before something _eats_ him.”

“I said there were no aliens, right?”

“Then what is it?”

“I can bring it in,” said Ginsberg. “I got a copy of the magazine at home. If you want.”

“You should,” said Stan. He pushed at Peggy’s shoulder, trying to steal her seat from her. She shoved him back. Most likely she would end up sitting in his lap, but she was going to make him work for it.

“Great! It’s a date,” said Ginsberg, and then immediately shook his head. “Not - not a _date_ , I meant -” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Shit. Can we please forget I just said that?”

“Sure,” said Peggy with a laugh. “I know what you meant.”

 

 

Ginsberg did bring the magazine in for them and Stan read it while lying on Peggy’s mattress, waiting for her to get out of the shower. He got so into it that he didn’t hear her finish and jumped when she flopped down next to him, her wet head on his shoulder.

“Peggy, you’ve got to read this,” he said. “It’s wild.”

“I will later,” she said, which meant that she wouldn’t. “I want to do something else right now.”

“What?”

She shucked her robe off and climbed on top of him, all naked and smelling of shower steam. “Guess.”

He brought the magazine back to the bar the next time he went and Ginsberg was there, jittery with anticipation. His knee was bouncing up and down as Stan walked towards him and his fingers tapped an irregular rhythm out on the spotted surface of the table. Couldn’t have stayed still if he was glued to the chair. The bruise around his eye was almost gone.

“So, what’d you think?” he asked with studied nonchalance, undercut by a twitch at the side of his mouth.

“It was great,” Stan said. “You can really write.”

“I can?” he said. His face went blank with astonishment and then brightened suddenly with a smile. “I mean, yeah, I can. I know. Thanks.”

“I think he’s blushing,” Peggy stage whispered, leaning around Stan to try and snag Ginsberg’s beer.

He fended her off. “I am not.” And following that, completely transparent: “Did you read it?”

“No,” she admitted. “Hey, buy me a drink. I didn’t bring any money.”

“I’m not buying you a drink. You won’t even read my story.”

“I will if you buy me a drink,” she wheedled.

“No, you won’t,” he said, but went with her to order something from the bartender anyway. It was some girl with spiked up candy-red hair whom Stan had never seen before. Joyce had the night off.

He picked up Ginsberg’s bag from the floor and unzipped it. It was an old knapsack covered in band pins. There was one for the _Ramones_ , one for _Slaughter and the Dogs_ , and four of David Bowie in various personas. Long-haired hippie Bowie from the cover of _Hunky Dory_ , two Ziggies and one Thin White Duke. It was stuffed full of paper, so he slipped his hand inside to try and make room for the magazine and caught the pad of his fingertip on something sharp. With a hiss he pulled his hand back but there was no blood, only a shallow scratch. He tilted the open bag towards him and searched carefully for the culprit.

And found it, poking through the lining at the bottom. Another pin, this time a pink triangle on a black background. He checked on Peggy and Ginsberg; they were bickering amiably at the bar. Peggy was drinking something neon colored and certainly sugar-infused. There was a shot glass in front of Ginsberg and presumably he was objecting to it. Peggy would convince him eventually.

Stan closed the back of the pin to end its bloodthirsty ways. He quickly tucked it into an inside pocket of the knapsack alongside a roll of breath mints, and added the magazine to Ginsberg’s traveling library. Everything was back in place under the table before they came back.

“Peggy made me do some kind of shot where I had to keep my hands behind my back,” Ginsberg said. “I almost dropped it on my shirt.”

“It would have improved it,” said Peggy.

“Coming from the woman wearing an old t-shirt as a dress.”

It was one of Stan’s - she’d added a studded belt and some torn fishnets of which he approved very much. “Hey,” he said, cupping the back of her thigh, just under the hem. “She looks good.”

He wanted to sneak her off to the bathroom. They couldn’t do that when Joyce was on shift because she kept catching them and saying, “Eugh, _heterosexuality_ ,” before chasing them out.

“I never said she looked _bad_ ,” said Ginsberg. “She looks great, obviously. I’m not blind.”

Peggy puffed up hilariously, preening. “Thank you.” The band started up a rapid, thudding baseline and the floor was beginning to fill up. She stood on her toes to try and see past the crowd building in front of her. “Who wants to dance with me?”

“I do,” said Stan and Ginsberg at the same time. Over Peggy’s head their eyes met and, as if by agreement, they fell into a heavy, awkward silence.

 

 

“It’s not that cold,” Peggy said, though her icy puffs of breath and mittened hands suggested otherwise. “You’re being a child. And I told you to wear a better coat.”

He flicked the pom-pom on the top of her hat. She reminded him of a porcelain doll in that getup, with her brilliant blue eyes and cheeks pinked from the wind. It was all old and out of style, purchased for her by her mother before she dropped out of secretarial school and became the black sheep of the family. “My coat’ll do just fine. I brought a scarf, didn’t I?”

“You _should_ have brought gloves,” she said, nodding towards his red fingers. He had been keeping them stuffed in the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Don’t need them,” he said. “I’m a man, Peggy -”

“Oh, god.” She rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

“Besides, I’ve got my own personal handwarmer,” he said, and shoved both hands down the back of her shirt.

“Stan!” she yelled. “You son of a bitch, let me _go_ -”

They carried on making a commotion until he got her pinned against the wall and kissed her. “Jackass,” she muttered against his lips, but let him keep going. Since they were tucked inside a doorway so there was no reason to stop, not until someone inside the store threw open the door with an annoyed sigh. It was an older woman, wielding a broom and a glare. “Move,” she snapped.

They did, Stan with his arm around Peggy’s shoulders and Peggy burying a shamefaced giggle against his chest. “Some people are so rude,” he said.

The crowd thickened as they neared the subway and Stan watched a familiar face emerge from a long gray building and join the flow of people. He was turned away from them, maybe heading for the station as well, but some instinct stopped Stan from calling out to him or trying to catch up. Instead he looked at the building as they passed. A nurse was inside, sitting at a reception desk and writing on a pad of paper. There was a list of doctor’s phone numbers bolted to a post next to the entranceway; some of them had a Ph.D. following their names. He glanced up with curiosity. _Flatbush Community Mental Health_ , the sign read. There was an adjacent pharmacy - the door Ginzo had come out of.

It took him a second to put two and two together. When he did he tried to subtly redirect Peggy into slowing down so that Ginsberg could escape unnoticed. She reacted exactly as he would have expected her to; by spotting the dark head moving through the throng and howling out, “Hey, _Michael_!” at the very top of her lungs.

Stan’s hope that Ginsberg would have enough sense to ignore it and keep going was dashed immediately. He spun around in a panicked way, his eyes darting back and forth. When he saw them he stopped, rabbit-frozen, and raised a hand in reluctant greeting. He was holding a white paper bag, the kind they put prescriptions in.

“You told me you had work today,” said Peggy, as he walked towards her with all the enthusiasm of a man facing down the firing squad. “What happened?”

“Something came up, you know how it is.” It was not an effective lie, and Ginsberg clearly knew it, because he abruptly changed horses midstream. “I got the schedule wrong. Didn’t see the point in sitting at home so I decided to run some errands.” He nodded for emphasis but there was nothing sure about the wide, fearful eyes. His knuckles tightened on his white paper bag.

Stan’s skin crawled with secondhand embarrassment. He wanted to hustle Ginsberg away to some quiet corner or take Peggy’s hand and flee down the street, anything but witnessing this unfolding.

“You should have called us,” said Peggy. “We’d have gone with you, we didn’t have anything better to do.”

“No, it was - it was just boring shit. You don’t want to be bothered.” Ginsberg looked everywhere but at her; at cigarette butts stubbed out by his feet, at a bus that passed them with a woosh, at Stan’s boots and then, for a single second, at his face. “It’s not important.”

He could not have made himself seem guiltier if he’d been putting in a special effort.

“We’ll take the train with you, then. If you’re done.”

“That’s not where I was going.”

Peggy frowned at him. “Of course you were, I just saw you.”

“Peggy,” Stan interrupted, “we better get going. We’ll be late.” He put an arm around her waist and tried to lead her away.

She resisted, stiffening her legs and leaning back. “What?” she said. “It’s an ice rink. They’re open all day and it’s not even noon, how could we be _late_.”

Ginsberg made a frustrated noise, not unlike a teakettle about to boil. He had gone from pale to flushed. “Oh, fuck it,” he said. “Just fuck it. You obviously know already, what are we pretending for.”

“I’m not pretending,” said Peggy. She was getting openly annoyed, all bright eyed and tense, and there were times that the two of them were so much alike that it made Stan crazy. “What is _with_ you today?”

“I was at the shrink’s up the street,” snapped Ginsberg, “Which I guess explains everything, doesn’t it?”

“ _Hey_ ,” said Stan. “Don’t get mad at her, she didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know that!” said Ginsberg, loudly, because his volume increased in direct proportion to how distressed he was. There were people paying attention to them now, staring as they went by. Everyone loved a bit of street theater. “Can I please go home? It’s - it’s a fucking embarrassment, I don’t want to talk about it in public.”

“It can’t be that big a deal,” said Stan.

Ginsberg’s laugh was bitter and short. “You have _no_ idea.” He sniffed, but he wasn’t crying - he just looked shaky and sick. “I’m going home,” he said, and looked at them out of the corner of his eye. “That okay with you?”

Stan could have stopped him - he could have grabbed him by the arm or the collar, dragged him back, _made_ him talk to them. But what good would that have done?

“Do whatever you want,” he said. “We’ll see you later.”

“Right,” muttered Ginsberg. He walked off in his stubborn silence and it felt more final than it should have. The punctuation at the end of a sentence.

“He’s not pissed off,” Stan said later, sitting next to Peggy in a subway car decorated with neon graffiti. “He’s scared. We need to let him get his head together.”

“Sure,” said Peggy, but she didn’t sound convinced.

 

 

Ginsberg walked through the door with his head down, looking tired and pissed off. He kicked it shut behind him and tried to shift the bags he was holding around, dropping his keys on the floor in the process.

“Hi,” said Peggy, when he was down there getting them.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he said, dropping them again. “How did you get in here?”

“Your Dad let me in,” she said. He had also given her a cup of hot chocolate before he left to go meet a friend, which Peggy thought was sweet.

“I bet you think this is pretty funny,” he said and slammed the grocery bags down on the counter. Hopefully there were no eggs inside. “I didn’t ask you to be here.”

“I know,” said Peggy. “And if you want me gone that bad I’ll leave. But you haven’t been answering any of my calls and I wanted to see if you were okay.”

He sighed and opened a cupboard door with considerably less rancor than before. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“Good,” she said. “Sit down with me for a minute.”

She could see him hesitating, but god only knew why. What did he think she was going to do, yell at him? “ _Michael_ ,” she prompted.

He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. “It’s weird, you being here. I never have anyone over.”

“I don’t see why not,” she said, and she didn’t. She had been to his door once before, collecting him for a show they were supposed to be attending, but he hadn’t let her come inside. It was small and a little cluttered, but still clean and livable. “You’ve seen my apartment. I sleep on a mattress in the middle of the floor.”

“Strange choice for someone afraid of mice,” said Ginsberg.

“That’s what the cat is for.”

“And Stan.”

“Yeah,” Peggy said, smiling. “And Stan. He’s worried about you, by the way.”

“Is he?” Ginsberg scratched his head in faux nonchalance. “He said that?” He was watching Peggy closely, face as carefully blank as it ever was. Not that his subterfuge was successful. Anyone - any _girl_ \- could tell what the stomped-down hope lurking in the backs of his eyes meant.

“He implied it,” she said. Actually he had told her to leave Ginsberg alone because ‘he’ll figure it out on his own’ and ‘you’re gonna scare him off, Peggy”. Whatever. Stan was totally wrong.

“I’m sorry I threw a fit,” Ginsberg said. “I acted like a big goddamned baby. It’s hard for me to - to tell people about how I am. That I’m - you know what, we should have a drink. You want a drink, Peggy?”

Peggy blinked. “Uh. Okay?”

He hopped up and milled around the kitchen, looking through cupboards and drawers until he found a bottle that was covered with dust and looked like it had been there for ages. “You like bourbon?” he asked, wiping it off with a dish towel. “I think Pop might’ve bought this for cooking. Booze lasts basically forever, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Bourbon is fine by me.”

He poured out a glass, too full, and tried to divide it between two but his hands weren’t steady and he spilled liquor on the counter. “Shit,” he muttered, grabbing for a rag that was dangling over the edge of the sink.

“Michael, forget about it,” Peggy said. “I don’t need -”

“No, no,” he insisted. “I got it.”

He brought the glasses back to the table and handed her one. “So,” he said, sitting down again. “Where was I?”

“I’m not sure,’ Peggy admitted. “You stopped before you started.”

“Right. Uh, okay - so.” He tossed back his drink desperately, all at once, and coughed. “Let me start over,” he said with a grimace. “What I was trying to tell you is that I’m not right in the head.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

“No, but I wish it was.”

“Lots of people go to see psychiatrists.”

“Not for the same reasons I do,” Ginsberg said. “I’ll level with you; I had some big problems in this area. For a long time, I did. I flunked out of highschool because I was too busy jumping from one nervous breakdown to another. I still haven’t got my GED or anything. And,” he paused and stared past her for a minute. Peggy wondered if the bourbon was having an effect. “And I spent some time hospitalized. First time for just a couple of weeks, and then for three months.”

“Did you want to go?” Peggy asked quietly.

“I sure as fuck didn’t sign up for the experience, no.”

“Did it help?”

“Eventually.” He shrugged. “Not the first place, that was a dump. And they treated us like we were idiots, like we didn’t know how to brush our own teeth. The second time around was better. It was real quiet, and the doctor had some sympathy. He got me into this program - going to the clinic you saw me at, and I’ve going ever since. So that’s it, that’s the story.”

Peggy fiddled with her glass. “That must have been very difficult.” She sounded so stiff and formal, and hoped he wouldn’t notice. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say. All at once a memory rose up in her mind; stomach pains and a doctor’s office; the numb, confused ambulance ride; signing paper after paper in a social worker’s office. The ragged months that followed, where she wasn’t at all sure she could make it. She wanted to say something, opened her mouth even - and then she just _couldn’t_.

Stan knew. She’d cried when she told him.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead.

“Thanks,” he said. “I just hate what it did to my Pop, y’know? It was so hard on him and now he worries over me constantly. Where I’m going, what I’m doing, if I’m in trouble. All the time. He has to keep me close or he panics.”

“I can understand that,” Peggy said. “If something ever happened to my -” she tried not wince, and then kept going without knowing if she had managed it, “- my _kid_ , I’d be exactly the same.”

“It’s not that I blame him,” said Ginsberg. “It’s that I need - I can’t be here always. I never told him where I met you or Stan. Nothing about the bar or the bands. I lie to him about going down there, I tell him I’m going for walks, or to a movie. He wouldn’t be bothered to know what I _was_ doing, but I wanted something to be only mine. Is that selfish? Just to keep it for me.”

“Everyone wants that,” said Peggy. “It’s not selfish. I bet he does all sorts of things you don’t know about.”

“Like what?”

“Gambling. Betting on the ponies.”

“Not likely.”

“Girlfriends, then. He’s got them lined up.”

“ _No_.”

“Alright,” said Peggy, smiling. “I’ll stop traumatising you. I should get going, anyway.”

He walked her out of the building, down to the street that was still bright with late-winter sunshine. The days were getting longer.

“You okay getting home?” he asked, leaning against the railing of the front steps. He was getting snow all over himself but she didn’t mention that.

“Yes,” she said, putting her gloves on and buttoning her coat. They were heading towards spring but the air was biting.

“Good. And, uh, Peggy?”

“Yeah?”

“You can come back, sometime,” he said. “I guess. If you want to.”

 

 

“I went and saw Michael today,” Peggy said over the top of a magazine that Stan was probably going to take apart and use for some garage band’s album cover later. He had been getting into collages. They were all completely disturbing, which was apparently the point.

She was lying on her mattress because there wasn’t anywhere else to be. The apartment was all one room. Her mattress, the television across from it, the dresser she kept her clothes in, and a round vinyl-topped table flanked by two chairs was it for furniture. She had papered the walls with posters and Stan’s drawings to cover up the water stains. Only once had her family visited her here - her mother hated everything about it.

There weren’t any mice, though. Or rats. So there.

Stan came out of the bathroom. He didn’t look amused.

“I told you that was a bad idea,” he said.

“It was a perfectly good idea,” said Peggy. “We talked, he calmed down - he’s fine.”

“Fine like _fine_ or fine like trying to get you to _leave_.”

“The first one,” she snapped. “I knew what I was doing. He just needed - a firm hand.”

“A firm hand.” He snorted derisively and sprawled next to her. “Yeah, I bet you liked that. Bet he did too.”

“What - _Stan_. You pervert, that’s not what I was referring to. That’s… our private stuff.” She paused for a minute and thought about what he had said. “How do you know he’d like it?”

“Intuition,” he snicked, and she rolled away from him, burying her nose in the magazine.

“ _You_ like it,” she said. And she was right - it had been different between them from the very beginning. Peggy had not always been involved the most exciting relationships. Her past was peppered with dull boys that she’d met through her family or through church - the only kind that had wanted her, for a long time - and a lot of lights-off sex under the covers. She had been taking what she could get. Later there were one-night stands and those were better; she had learned that sex for it’s own sake could be fun. That it was okay to be a little bit dirty about it. Stan had embraced that, when they started up together. He was shameless about anything that happened between the sheets.

Not to mention that he had a great fondness for clear, authoritative instructions. It was the catholic schoolboy in him. All that time spent around intimidating women armed with rulers, it did something to them.

“You’re projecting,” she added, and flipped a page. Ponds Cold Cream was giving away half-price coupons.

“‘M not,” he mumbled, nuzzling at the back of her neck and slipping his fingers between the buttons of her shirt. “He has a crush on you.”

Peggy twisted around to look at him. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am,” said Stan. “He’s crazy about you.”

It’s not me he’s crazy about, she thought. She didn’t tell him that, though. It was only a theory. “If you say so.”

“At first I thought he was - well, nevermind.”

“What?”

“Gay.”

“He might still be.”

“Nah. He stares at your ass too hard.”

“And of course you’d keep track of that,” she said. “Hey, promise not to be freaked out if I tell you something?”

“You slept with him.”

“Stan, be serious. It’s just that I ...kind of thought,” she hesitated, still not sure she should be saying anything, “that it was you he had a thing for.”

“Okay,” he said, tonelessly. And then, “you though I’d freak out if he did?”

“I didn’t - I couldn’t be certain. Maybe.”

He pulled away, taking his warm hands and the comforting weight of his chest against her back with him. “Thanks, Peggy.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, and scooted closer to him. “It’s not like I was afraid you’d kick his ass. But… straight men get uncomfortable about the idea of another man checking them out. Come on, you know they do. Men don’t always mean anything by it but they get defensive on reflex - like every locker room joke, ever. He would be really upset if you weren’t relaxed around him because of something I said. And I might be completely wrong!”

“I’m not saying I’ve been a fucking angel,” said Stan. “I told the same shitty jokes everyone else did. I admit that. But hell, Peggy, half of us are just bullshitting so no one looks at us twice. It’s not like I never - I’ve - you know what I’m getting at.”

“I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

To her amazement his face actually started to redden. She wouldn’t have believed he _could_ blush, the man who once ate her out in her childhood bedroom with her mother taking an afternoon nap one door away.

“I’m saying I’ve done it. With another guy, a couple times.”

She was aware that she was staring, and also that she needed to stop. It was just so unexpected.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, and his voice had a frenzied edge she had very rarely heard from him. “A handjob, because you’re drunk, you’re horny - lots of people do the same thing. It doesn’t mean anything. I swear.”

She put her hand over his mouth. “Stan, sweetheart. Please calm down. I’m not the slightest bit worried.”

“No?” he asked, dragging her hand off his face.

“No. You remember what Joyce is always saying.” Peggy wiggled her eyebrows. “Sexuality is flexible.”

“Joyce says that to women she wants to bang.”

“Yes. But it’s also true.” Peggy tucked herself into her usual spot by his side, draping a leg over his hip. “It’s even true for me. I kissed Joyce myself, you do recall that.”

“Yeah, but nothing else ever happened.”

“It could have. If things had been different.” At the time she’d had a boyfriend. Not a good one, but still a boyfriend, and she had been trying to be that timid, careful girl her mother had hoped for, the one that wanted all the right things - security, a nice house in the suburbs, a husband that kissed her goodbye over breakfast and came home at six on the dot. “Who knows?”

“It really doesn’t bother you?” He looked so worried that she almost laughed, but if she did he would never speak to her again. It was just incredibly odd, him being all worked up over nothing. They were fine.

“Nope. You’re as into my ass as you ever were.”

He smirked. “It _is_ good,” he said, and squeezed her bottom to punctuate the statement.

She shot him an exasperated look. In an unpredictable universe it was nice to see that Stan’s insufferability was a constant. He grinned like the cheeky bastard he was.

Peggy recovered her magazine from the rumpled blankets and used his shoulder as a pillow to support her head. “Besides,” she said, “now if we ever decide we want a threesome there’s a viable candidate already lined up. That’s convenient.”

It was intended as a joke, a way to break the ice after a serious conversation. But he went very quiet and still; she felt his breathing deepen even as he tensed up.

She didn’t let on that she noticed. He’d had enough shocks for one day.

 

 

“Peggy, why don’t you have a couch?” Ginsberg asked. He took off his jacket and hung it off the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Stan was hogging the table with a poster he was working on, paint all over his hands and the vinyl.

“Couches are for the bourgeoisie,” Peggy said. “Did you bring your books with you?”

“Yes, I brought my books.” He dropped them, one by one, onto Peggy’s bed. History, Chemistry and Algebra. All subjects he had failed in high school, and all night classes he was taking now. Peggy had talked him into it. He was going to try for his GED in the summer. “I still don’t know why I’m bothering.”

“So you can get a better job,” said Peggy. “One where you don’t have to be in at four in the morning.”

He worked at a bakery, in the back. A couple times Peggy and Stan had stopped by for lunch and he gave them free challah. They stood out in the alleyway after and he didn’t wear a coat either time because he was so sick of the hot ovens. Most of the fancy stuff was ordered in, he told them, but the bread had to be made fresh every day. There had been flour in his hair.

“I bet you’ll miss the smell, though,” she added, “when you quit.”

“I hate that smell more than anything,” he said. “I swear I’m never eating a baked good again in my life.” A shudder went over him at the thought and he sat down heavily on the mattress, bouncing the books around.

“Shoes - oh, you took them off already.” Stan always forgot.

He rifled through his bag, which was as filled with junk as it always was. He pulled out two comic books, one of his science fiction magazines, and some huge hardcover that looked like it might be Russian literature. “What?” he asked when she looked at him. “I like to have something to read on the train.”

“Are you on it all day?” She picked up the hardcover book. It felt like a brick in her hand.

“Shit,” he said, “I forgot my pen at home. Can I borrow one from you?”

Stan tossed one at him from the table. “Don’t chew on it,” he said. “That’s my inking pen.”

“I wouldn’t put someone’s stuff in my mouth,” said Ginsberg.

“I’m not even gonna touch that one,” Stan said, and Peggy laughed. She couldn’t help it.

“What?” Ginsberg asked. He looked back and forth between them. “What’s funny, I don’t get it.”

“Somebody better tell him about the birds and the bees,” said Stan.

“I think what you’re referring to is a little higher level than that.”

“You’re good at it,” said Stan, because he was a _horrible bastard_ , “I’m sure you can make yourself understood.”

Peggy’s mouth fell open in shock. “You son of a bitch.”

“Hey,” he said with a slow, lazy grin. “It’s a _compliment_.”

“I’d like to remind everyone I still don’t know what’s happening,” Ginsberg interjected. “Hello?”

“Nothing,” said Peggy. She was feeling distinctly hot under the collar, and she was going to kill Stan dead for causing it. That dickhead. “Do your homework.”

“Okay, fine,” he said, clearly bewildered. “I wasn’t the one being all distracting with… whatever that was.”

He picked up the pen - the one he wasn’t supposed to put in his _mouth_ \- and got down to business, sitting tailor style with a notebook balanced on his knee and scribbling away.

Stan went back to work as well, as if he hadn’t just been throwing innuendo around like confetti. Peggy watched him, trying to figure out if he’d meant anything by it. It would be just like him to cloak something he actually wanted in jokes. But she couldn’t tell for sure.

So she gave up and watched T.V. instead.

 

 

Her place was cheap and never heated correctly in the winter, but when Peggy woke up she was uncharacteristically cozy. It took her a second to shake off sleep enough to remember why. A late snowstorm, complete with howling wind strong enough to whistle through the cracks in the windows. Ginsberg had been ready to head out into to it before Stan and Peggy convinced him to stay. It took some doing. He had been strangely reticent, like he was imposing on them horribly by borrowing a spare toothbrush and a third of the bed.

Peggy squinted in an attempt to cut through the darkness but her efforts were useless. The apartment was a basement suite and her curtains were heavy - she wrote at odd hours and sometimes slept late, so she needed something that would block out daylight. Good for sleeping, not so good for waking up in the middle of the night craving a glass of water.

Stan shifted next to her and she threw an arm over him, cuddling into his back. “Hey,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure he was awake, “you think he’d notice if we fooled around?”

“I think that would make me a shitty houseguest, is what I think,” Ginsberg said.

Peggy shrieked. The cat shot off the bed with a yowl of his own, claws scrabbling across the floor. She rolled sideways and slammed into Stan, who was already sitting up and turning on the lamp.

“What the hell just happened?” he demanded. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Nothing,” said Peggy, desperately. “Please turn the light off so I can die in peace.”

“Okay,” said Stan, scratching his chest and looking completely baffled. “Why, exactly?”

Ginsberg also sat up, the blankets falling to his waist. He was wearing Stan’s _Eat The Rich_ t-shirt and his hair was sticking up all funny in the back. “She offered to fool around with me. She thought I was you.” He was laughing, goddamn him.

“What,” said Stan, openly delighted, and oh god he was never going to let this go.

“Shut up,” Peggy growled. “You’re usually on that side of the bed, I was running on instinct!”

“Or you saw an opportunity.”

“I hate you.” Peggy pulled the covers up over her head so she could have some privacy to writhe around in embarrassment.

“I’m real flattered, Peggy,” Ginsberg said. “Honestly.”

“I hate you too. You can both go sleep on the couch.”

“Guess you shoulda bought one, then.”

Stan was shaking with laughter next to her. She pinched him on the leg but he just kept on going.

He reached beneath the blankets and pulled her up bodily. She crossed her arms, hair in her face, and refused to acknowledge him.

“Someone make me some tea,” she said. She always wanted something to drink when she was up in the middle of the night - it helped relax her, so she could get back to sleep.

“What, right now?” Ginsberg asked.

“You’re volunteered,” Stan said, laying back down with no intention of moving again.

Ginsberg groaned but he got out of bed. “Fuck, this floor is _cold_ ,” he muttered as he shuffled along. Peggy was sure it had been a nice floor at some point in the building’s existence - it was the original hardwood, still - but it had become scarred and discolored from years of hard use. It retained no heat at all; Peggy kept slippers by her bed so she didn’t have to tiptoe into the kitchen in the mornings.

“What kind do you want?” Ginsberg asked and held up two tins. “The one with the flowery stuff in it or the one without?”

“If by ‘flowery stuff’ you mean earl grey, then yes, that’s the one.”

“It smells like perfume, is all I’m saying,” Ginsberg said, and put the kettle on.

It was steaming hot and just the way she liked it when he brought the teacup back to the bed. “Thank you, Michael,” she said. “You could have made yourself some.”

“I’d spill it,” he said as he pulled the covers over himself and put his feet against hers to warm them up. Which was unusually intimate of him - he wasn’t very easy with touch, in her experience. “I don’t eat in bed, ever. Not even when I’m sick.”

Stan turned on the television and she finished her tea while they watched the end of a b-movie from the fifties. There were several rubber aliens and a robot that was clearly made of spraypainted cardboard. “This is right up your alley, Ginzo,” Stan said.

He sniffed. “My writing is way more sophisticated than some dumb movie.”

Peggy handed the cup off to Stan, who put it on top of her dresser. “We should collaborate on something. A comic, maybe.”

“That works for me,” said Stan, and looked over at Ginsberg. “You got any ideas knocking around your head that you haven’t used yet?”

“Tons,” said Ginsberg, lighting up. “Or we could come up with something new.”

“We should talk about it in the morning,” said Peggy, because if she let him get started now he would go on all night. Onscreen the aliens were chasing the robot with ray guns. Presumably he was the hero of the piece. They watched them fight in silence, the slapdash effects and cheesy dialogue somehow drawing them in. There was an unreal quality to being up this late, even in the city that never slept. The blizzard had chased everyone inside and cast a hush over the streets. It seemed like they were the only three people awake in New York.

“Would you actually have done it?” asked Ginsberg.

“Done what?” Peggy didn’t take her eyes off the movie. The aliens looked like ambulatory mushrooms.

“Fooled around,” he said. “If it was Stan you were talking to.”

“Of course _not_ ,” said Peggy. “We aren’t pigs.” But here she was thinking about it - Stan sliding his fingers inside her, one hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. But she couldn’t stay quiet, she never really could, and they’d wake him up -

“We are kind of pigs,” said Stan. “To be fair. There was that time at your Mom’s house -”

“ - _not_ the same thing -”

“ - and in the bathroom at SCDP.”

“Everyone’s done that.”

“I haven’t,” said Ginsberg. He was picking at a loose thread on the leg of his borrowed sweatpants.

“You should try it,” Peggy said, offhand, just to have something to say. Ginsberg looked - he looked like he was imagining that scenario very, very vividly. Stan wasn’t in any better shape, either, and she _knew_ him, she could read his face like a book.

She’d had it with both of them. It was up to her to move things forward, as usual, because men were useless.

“Michael,” she said, “come here, would you?” She experienced no small thrill at how quickly he obeyed and when he leaned in, just the way she wanted him to, she kissed him.

He froze up for a second before she felt a tremor run through him and then he relaxed all at once, letting her pull him close and kiss him deeply with one hand on his spine. Letting her take charge.

“Is this okay?” he asked, all nerves again when she let him go. He looked back and forth between her and Stan. “Is it?”

“Yeah,” said Stan, who sure did sound winded for a guy who was just lying there. “But _Jesus Christ_ , Peggy, you could try warning me.”

“I thought you liked surprises,” she said. “Would you like us to stop?”

“No,” he said, “I want you to keep going.”

“Then get off your butt and help.”

He tugged her hips backwards until she fell into his lap. His kiss was soft and familiar and a comfort even when it was dirty, like right now, when he bit lightly at her lower lip and moved on to sucking a bruise into the side of her neck. They liked marking each other up. Stan cupped her breasts through her nightgown and rubbed with the tips of his fingers until her nipples were stiff and easily visible through the thin fabric. The friction drove her crazy and she pressed the heel of her hand against herself, down between her legs, to take the edge off.

Ginsberg made a lovely shocked noise and watched them with wide eyes and parted lips. It was too tempting a picture and Peggy couldn’t leave him alone.

She grabbed the collar of his shirt so she could kiss him and hold him still at the same time. But he didn’t need any extra encouragement - he just moved with her, so nicely. Stan had been right about him.

“I think you’re neglecting our guest,” she said to Stan, over her shoulder. She was still sitting in his lap and felt him twitch against her ass at that; with a wide, triumphant smile she scooted away so that he could move. He groaned but he looked so relieved, like she had given him permission for something.

“You don’t have to,” said Ginsberg quickly.

“But I want to,” Stan said. He used his greater weight to bear Ginsberg down to the bed and held him there but the kiss, when it happened, was very gentle. Peggy thought he had probably wanted to do that for some time.

“Oh,” said Ginsberg, against Stan’s mouth. His eyes closed slowly when Stan kissed him again, and he arched upwards with a gasp when a hand snuck under the waistband of his sweats.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he choked out, lifting his hips into Stan’s stroking hand. “That’s - that feels -”

“Stop,” Peggy said, softly but firmly.

Stan stopped, much to Ginsberg’s consternation. He moved to the side when Peggy urged him to by way of a hand on his arm; she gave him a kiss in thanks.

And then she climbed on top of Ginsberg, between his legs, because in her heart of hearts Peggy had always been a greedy girl.

“Before we get started we should talk,” she said.

“We should?” said Ginsberg. “It won’t… ruin the mood.”

“Hmmm,” said Peggy. “I don’t know. Will it?” She pushed her hips against his, against the hard shape of him under his clothes. He shuddered.

“No,” he said, his voice all cracked. “It won’t.”

“Tell me what you like,” she said.

“I - I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Okay.” Peggy shrugged. “Then tell me what you _want_.” They had condoms in the bottom drawer of her dresser, if they ended up needing them, and other things besides - but she suspected they were going to keep things fairly simple.

“I want - I can’t say it. I don’t know.”

“Tell me what you think about when you touch yourself.”

“Just think of it as a story,” Stan said. He was lying on his back, still dressed. “Pretend it’s someone else you’re talking about.”

“Okay. I’ll try.” Ginsberg took a deep breath and licked his lips. “I want - I want to go down on Peggy. On my knees. And then Stan. And, um, I want to finish you both off. Before you touch me. Before I’m allowed to - you get the point.”

Peggy stood up. Ginsberg’s eyes followed her, uncertain. “Get undressed,” she said. “And kneel down.”

By the time she had taken her nightgown and underwear off he was already naked and down on his knees, as instructed. Eager. She shivered with anticipation at the sight of him, waiting with his hands resting on his thighs like he didn’t know what to do with them. Quiet for once.

“Alright,” she said, a bit breathlessly, and stepped forward. He was between her and the mattress and she gripped him by the hair - not yanking, but hard enough to give her leverage. Then she tugged him towards her.

She didn’t have to do much. He slotted his mouth between her legs without hesitation. His first few licks were tentative, teasing swipes along the line of her cunt. “Harder,” she said, pulling just slightly on his hair. It shook something loose in him. He murmured an unclear word against her, frantically, and licked into her with real hunger, with a whine that made it sound like this was _killing_ him.

“Fuck,” she said, suddenly shaky. He held on to the backs of her knees and that shored her up temporarily, until he decided his hands belonged further up. Where he could spread her open with his thumbs and press his tongue inside, again, _again_ \- and then lick up to her clit, across it -

\- back and forth, back and forth, and she was grinding against his face, panting. Using him, and he loved it, he kept whimpering and twitching and trying to get closer. She was wet, his _face_ was wet, she wasn’t sure who was making a bigger mess -

“Suck me,” she said, “suck, uh, god yes like _that_ -”

\- because he did, relentlessly, until she yelled and clawed at his scalp and came, curling forward with her forehead against Stan’s shoulder.

“Shhh, baby,” he said, “he did pretty good, huh?”

The room was as chilly as always but Ginsberg was flushed to the chest. He leaned against her hip, trying to slow his breathing. She stroked over the top of his head with a gentle hand.

“He did great,” she said. “Are you ready for Stan, Michael?”

He wiped off his chin and nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready. I want to.”

Stan peeled off his shirt and shorts and tossed them onto the mattress. He’d always been very casual about nudity, whether it was for sex or just walking around after a shower.

Ginsberg swallowed and inched towards him, still kneeling down in a way that had to be hurting his knees by now. He wrapped his hand around the base of Stan’s cock and pumped him, experimentally.

Stan’s head rolled back and he sighed. “We could just do this. We don’t have to -”

“I want to,” Ginsberg repeated, and sucked the head of Stan’s cock into his mouth.

“Oh, be careful,” said Peggy. “Be careful with him, Stan -”

“I will, I will,” Stan said with a grunt as Ginsberg’s cheeks hollowed around him. “He’s trying so hard, god.”

“He liked it when I pulled his hair,” said Peggy. “Not too much, don’t hurt him.”

Stan got the picture; he held on to Ginsberg’s hair like Peggy had - a light tug, no more - and rocked into his mouth. Making him take it, but slow and steady; recognizing his limits.

Ginsberg swallowed Stan down as far as he could. Peggy was beginning to suspect him of being an overachiever. At one point he gagged, pushing himself too much, and Peggy pulled him back by the shoulders. “None of that,” she said. This was supposed to be good for everyone.

“Hard to believe you’re a first timer,” said Stan, ragged, pushing into Ginsberg’s mouth. “You know how you look right now, drooling around my cock? You - fucking gorgeous like this, like you were made for it - for me and Peggy -”

They were both whimpering, coming together hard and beautiful, her boys, and Peggy hated to interrupt, but -

“Ease up,” she said. Stan listened immediately, stepping back with a moan, but Ginsberg tried to follow him with his mouth.

“ _Why_ ,” he said, and Christ, he sounded raw.

“Because he’s going to come, and you want to work up to swallowing. Trust me.”

“Then - what - what do I -”

“Your hands,” said Stan, “your hands are just fine -”

Ginsberg didn’t wait another second; he stroked Stan with both hands, rubbing the slickness up and down the shaft. He licked across the head, at the streaks of precome there, along the sensitive slit - and that was it, Stan was done. He came cursing and grabbing at Ginsberg’s shoulders for support.

Ginsberg’s face and hands were a sticky mess. “Hold on,” said Peggy. “Don’t do anything until I get back.”

She ducked into the bathroom to wet a washcloth down. When she came back out they were sitting side-by-side on the mattress and Stan had his hand between Ginsberg’s shoulderblades.

“Is he okay?” she asked, frowning.

“He is,” Stan reassured her. “Only a little bit overwhelmed.”

“I feel,” Ginsberg blinked, and seemed to shake off some mental fog. “I feel drunk, almost. Or high.”

“Good sex can do that,” Peggy said, and handed him the washcloth. After he was done with it she put it on the dresser - they were going to need it right away, anyhow.

Ginsberg was still hard - had been hard, this whole time, and he’d never tried to touch himself once. Peggy got him to lie down on his back and surreptitiously checked his knees for bruising or scratches as he did. That hardwood was not a comfortable surface. They were red but otherwise unharmed.

“You did so well,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

“Can you touch me?” he asked - no, _begged_ , “can you, please - I need -”

“Of course,” she said, and she and Stan moved together, stroking him with entangled fingers. He was so responsive, and the waiting had made him oversensitized. So they kept it light and easy. Peggy rubbed her thumb in small circles over the head and Stan was wringing the best kinds of noises out of him, all sobbing breath and gasps -

“I’m - I’m going -”

“Yes,” said Peggy, “You’ve been so patient. We want it, come on, do it now -”

Ginsberg came with his eyes screwed shut and his fingers digging into the sheets. It took him a long time to come down, before his breathing evened out and he could speak again. Peggy wiped him down in the meantime, enjoying every spasm of his tender nerve endings.

“I almost can’t believe that just happened,” he said after he’d regained his powers of cognition. “It’s like a crazy dream.”

“It can happen again, as far as I’m concerned,” Peggy said. “What do you think, Stan?”

Stan looked Ginsberg over from head to foot. “I think we nabbed a good one, Peggy,” he said. “I say we keep him.”

 

 

“Don’t be such a wimp,” Peggy said, backing Ginsberg into the bathroom stall. “It would look awesome!”

“You’re going to make all my hair fall out,” said Ginsberg. He dodged her as best he could in the tiny space, but she got him cornered. “See if you like me then!”

“Bleaching doesn’t make your hair fall out,” Peggy scoffed. “Usually. I’m just saying your hair is too dark otherwise -”

“I don’t want to dye my hair, it looks fine,” he said, trying to squirm away.

“But blue is a nice color on you,” she pouted. “Stan, back me up here.”

Stan was over by the sink, adding to the mural he had going on the wall. He betrayed her without apology. “He likes his hair the way it is, Peggy. Leave him alone.”

“Whatever,” Peggy said. “You’re both losers.” And then she kissed Ginsberg, because they were already in here and she might as well.

Behind her she heard the door open. “Ewww, heterosexual - huh. Actually, I have no idea what’s going on.”

It was Joyce, and she was leading Megan in by the hand. Megan looked especially pretty today and also very disappointed at finding the room already occupied.

“The wave of the future,” Stan said.

“Fair enough,” said Joyce. “But get out, I need some alone time with my lady.”

“You’re working,” said Peggy. “You ought to be outside, attending to your customer’s needs.”

She thought it was a fair point. Joyce kicked them out anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
